Man Sells Fraudulent Braves Tickets: A Cautionary Tale

After losing their single playoff game against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Atlanta Braves may be off-season, but the team is certainly not free from press coverage.

Last month, the MLB franchise discovered a scam involving more than $75,000. By writing a handful of bad checks, 36-year-old James Lally acquired 16 sets of Atlanta Braves tickets to season games. Tickets in hand, Lally then took to Craigslist and the Hudson Grille, a sports bar in Midtown Atlanta, where he proceeded to hock the Braves tickets to unassuming baseball fans. Lally's scheme was eventually uprooted when he tried to sell the dishonest tickets to Austin Lee, a skeptical accountant. Once tipped, Georgia authorities immediately placed Lally in a Dekalb County jail and the Braves manually deactivated the tickets, though initially there was no way of telling who still held the invalid Atlanta tickets. This was not Lally's first run-in with the law either; he served two times in New Jersey for theft and fraud, again involving bad checks and other sporting events, including the Daytona 500 and a golf fundraiser for charity.

Unfortunately for honest event-goers, identifying counterfeit passes is only becoming more difficult in the wake of sophisticated printers and online tickets. Still, there are a few basic rules to keep in mind when buying tickets from a third party.

It seems obvious, but make sure the event is indeed happening at the scheduled time on the ticket. If you buy Washington Hawks tickets for example, check the official website or call the stadium to confirm the information on the event pass. If the phone numbers do not match up, that does not necessarily mean the ticket is fraudulent; it could simply be the line for a different department. Regardless, it is always a good idea to call the printed number to be safe.

When you speak to a representative on the phone, ask him if your seats are in fact authentic. If your seat numbers fail to match up with the venue, you obviously will not be able to attend. What you do not need to worry about is the name on the ticket. With the rise of online ticket vendors, venues will not be too concerned about whose name is printed. Of course, Will Call demands a specific credit card or ID, but tickets themselves are excluded by default from such confirmation.If you are sufficiently skeptical and use discretion, you need not fret about buying from a third party, whether it be Tampa Bay Rays tickets, Washington Rays tickets, or anything else.

Source: http://www.artipot.com/articles/1425463/man-sells-fraudulent-braves-tickets-a-cautionary-tale.htm

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